Iran.Nobel medal confiscated....[ 505 ]

Shirin Ebadi Nobel Peace Prize medal 'seized by Iran'

Norwegian foreign minister Jonas Gahr Stoere: "We have expressed dismay"

BBC , 10:02 GMT, Friday, 27 November 2009

Iranian human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi says the Nobel Peace Prize medal she won in 2003 has been confiscated.

The medal and accompanying diploma were taken from a bank box in Tehran about three weeks ago on the orders of Iran's Revolutionary Court, she said.

Ms Ebadi, who has criticised Iran's recent disputed election and the subsequent treatment of protesters, said her bank account was also frozen.

Iranian authorities have not made any official comment on the issue.

Norway, which presents the award, said it was "shocked", by the confiscation.

The country's foreign ministry said it was the first time national authorities had taken such action.

Undeterred

Ms Ebadi told the Associated Press news agency that her French Legion d'Honneur award and a ring given by the German association of journalists were taken along with the Nobel prize.

I will return whenever it is useful for my country Shirin Ebadi

Speaking in London, she said the Iranian authorities had also demanded taxes on the $1.3m (£800,000) she was awarded, but that the prize is exempt under local law.

Ms Ebadi, the first Muslim women to be awarded a Nobel prize, has been away from Iran since travelling to Spain for a conference the day before the 12 June election.

The result of the election, in which President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was re-elected, saw thousands of people protesting for several days, with hundreds arrested.

Ms Ebadi said she had "received many threatening messages" since leaving Iran.

"They said they would detain me if I returned, or that they would make the environment unsafe for me wherever I am," she said, adding that her colleagues still in the country had also been "detained or banned from travelling abroad".

But Ms Ebadi said she would not let anyone prevent her from carrying out her "legal activities" and would eventually go back to Iran.

"I will return whenever it is useful for my country," she said.

'Unheard of'

Mohammad Ali Dadkhah, a spokesman for Ms Ebadi's human rights group, said the prize money had been used "to help prisoners of conscience and their families".

The election result was followed by days of protest and hundreds of arrests

"The account has been blocked by the officials and they do not allow withdrawals," the AFP news agency quoted the lawyer as saying.

Mr Dadkhah said both the blocking of the account and the confiscation of the award were illegal under Iranian law and that the move was "politicised".

In Norway, where a committee chooses the annual recipient for the peace prize, Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere said: "Such an act leaves us feeling shock and disbelief."

The ministry summoned Iran's charge d'affaires to protest about the confiscation.

The Norwegian ministry said it was also concerned about the alleged beating of Ms Ebadi's husband in Tehran, with Mr Stoere saying the "persecution of Dr Ebadi and her family shows that freedom of expression is under great pressure in Iran".

The Norwegian Nobel Committee's permanent secretary, Geir Lundestad, said the move was "unheard of" and "unacceptable", Associated Press reported.

Schizophrenia ... wins compensation[ 504 ]

Part-timer who developed schizophrenia after working excessive overtime wins compensation

Tokyo, Japan..(Mainichi Japan) November 27, 2009

A part-time worker who developed schizophrenia after working more than 160 hours of overtime a month at a convenience store had his workers' compensation claim accepted, it has been learned.

While there has been a rising number of cases in which deaths and suicides from overwork are covered by workers' compensation, it is rare for a non-regular worker to have a workers' compensation claim recognized. The case also underscores that longer work hours have become more common among non-regular workers.

According to the part-time worker and the Kanagawa Occupational Safety and Health Center, the man -- a 42-year-old resident of Kanagawa Prefecture -- started working part-time at a Circle K Sunkus convenience store in the prefecture in 1998. His work hours gradually got longer, to the point that his family spotted him working in a groggy state. He eventually quit the job in November 2007.

After the man filed a claim for workers' compensation, the labor standards inspection office found that he had worked more than 160 hours of overtime in March and October 2005, respectively, based on store receipts and other records. The labor office recognized in September this year that his development of schizophrenia sometime before December 2005 was a labor accident, saying, "He constantly worked long hours, which imposed a psychological burden on him."

The recognition implies that the man kept working for nearly two years since he first developed schizophrenia. During that period, he worked 350 to 529 hours a month, mostly spending the night at the store, according to a note kept by the man. He was, however, paid a fixed monthly wage of 300,000 yen.

"He was forced to work in an abnormal way while subject to unstable employment conditions. Longer work hours, which have become more common even among non-regular workers, should be rectified," said Hiroyuki Kawamoto, an official at the Kanagawa Occupational Safety and Health Center.

The public relations department of Circle K Sunkus Co. withheld from commenting on the case, saying, "We are aware that the man had his workers' compensation claim recognized, but we haven't been informed of the details yet."

Currently, the man is working again, in part for rehabilitation.

In fiscal 2008, there were a record 927 applications for workers' compensation, claiming that workers' mental disorder, such as depression, was attributable to overworking, with 303 of them involving those in their 30s and 224 in their 20s. Among the total, 148 had committed suicide.

Women Abuse in Russia[ 503 ]

Report: Women Face Rampant Abuse in Russia

By Alexandra Odynova

The St. Petersburg Times

MOSCOW Friday Nov.27,2009— Thousands of women in Russia are subject to violence, including sexual abuse, domestic violence, human trafficking and crimes related to national traditions, according to a report released Wednesday.

Every hour, a Russian woman is killed by her husband or partner, while a woman is sexually abused every 30 minutes, the report said. The study was prepared by the Anna Center, which works to prevent violence against women, and released to coincide with the International Day for Elimination of Violence Against Women.

“Violence against women remains a big problem, but it receives little attention,” Marina Pisklakova-Parker, the center’s director, said during the report’s presentation.

The Syostry, or Sisters, call center, which helps victims of sexual abuse, received 3,534 calls in Moscow last year.

“There is no state support for victims during the first moments after an act of violence. Instead, women are interrogated for an investigation,” said Alexei Parshin, a lawyer who handles sexual abuse cases. Law enforcement agencies often treat such crimes as if they were provoked by the victim, he said.

The country has just 21 places of refuge for women facing domestic abuse, and only one of them is in Moscow.

The situation is particularly grim in the North Caucasus, where women are sometimes abducted and killed under local traditions and sharia law.

According to the report, 180 abductions were registered in Dagestan alone last year, most of which were aimed at forcing women into marriage.

“It’s easier to track down cases of violence in Dagestan because there are many organizations working there. In places like Chechnya it’s much harder because few organizations are still there,” said Yelena Zolotilova, who works at a women’s shelter in the nearby southern city of Rostov-on-Don.

Earlier this year, seven Chechen women were shot dead in a banya by their male relatives in what were reportedly honor killings. Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, a devoted Muslim, said the women were rightfully shot for their “loose morals.”

Zolotilova said law enforcement in the North Caucasus frequently ignores cases of abducted women to focus on terrorism. Prosecution of such abductions is all but impossible, she said, because there is no separate federal law that prohibits the kidnapping of brides.

Geological Survey of mapped images[ 502 ]

NASA’s Newest Map of the World

By Rebecca Lindsey Design by Robert Simmon November 18, 2009

In June 2009, NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey put the finishing touches on a new collection of mapped images covering the entire land surface of the Earth and made them available to anyone, anywhere in the world, absolutely free.

The result of a collaboration between NASA, the U.S. Geological Survey, and the U.S. National Geospatial Agency, the Global Land Survey 2005 features around 9,500 images from NASA’s Landsat satellites captured between 2004–2007.

The images are detailed enough to make out features as small as 30 meters (about one-third the length of an American football field), they have been carefully screened for clouds, and each one shows the landscape during its growing season.

Some of the images are as striking as a piece of artwork. Stitched together into a single mosaic, the collection paints the most detailed picture of Earth’s land surface a person can get for free.

Sand dunes deep in the Sahara Desert align perpendicular to the prevailing winds. This natural-color image was obtained on March 11, 2006, by the Landsat 7 satellite. (NASA Earth Observatory image by Robert Simmon, based on 2005 Global Land Survey data.)

Before you think about ordering it, however, consider this: to view the entire thing at full size, your computer screen would need to be as big as the Hoover Dam.

More than a pretty picture

The survey’s pretty pictures are just a fringe benefit, though. The real motivation for the project, explains remote-sensing scientist Jeff Masek, the NASA lead on the project, was the increasingly urgent need among Earth and climate scientists for a detailed global image of the land surface in which the latitude, longitude, and elevation of every pixel had been mapped.

Scientists need this view in order to understand the extent and pace of changes people are making to Earth’s surface. Landscape changes affect the climate, but perhaps more significantly, they will determine whether Earth’s natural and managed ecosystems are able to sustain the human population as it grows to a projected 9 billion people in the next 40 years.

Tehran, Iran, is one of the fastest-growing cities on Earth.

These false-color satellite images show downtown Tehran on August 2, 1985 (top), and July 19, 2009 (bottom). Urban areas appear gray and black, vegetation is bright green, and barren areas are brown. (NASA Earth Observatory images by Robert Simmon, based on Landsat 5 data.)

Of course, scientists could have used this detailed, global view several decades ago, and in theory, the earliest Landsat missions could have provided it. But only recently have scientists been able to handle the expense and the technical challenges of mapping the world with Landsat images.

A $36 Million Map

When the first Landsat launched in 1972, virtually every piece of technology that we think of as essential for viewing, sharing, or analyzing digital images either hadn’t been invented (like the World Wide Web and DVDs) or hadn’t been commercialized (like the microprocessor that runs desktop computers).

Two technicians examine Landsat 3 during its assembly in 1977. The earliest Landsat satellites predate most contemporary computer technology. (Photograph courtesy the Landsat Program.)

Each Landsat image is several hundred Megabytes. Until recently, it would have taken a super computer to sort, join, and geolocate (map the latitude and longitude of) the thousands of images needed to make a global picture. “For decades, the computing challenge was huge,” says Masek.

The challenge of handling the data translated into prices that few researchers could afford. “For a number of years in the 80s and early 90s,” said Masek, when the satellites were being operated by a commercial company, “it cost about $4,000 for a single Landsat image, and it takes about 9,000 of them to map the land area of the globe.” To make a global image for just one time period would have cost $36 million.

When the government resumed satellite operations in 2000, the price per scene dropped to about $600, says Masek. And since late last year, all the Landsat scenes in the USGS archive have been free. With prices dropping, in the late 1990s, NASA began working on Landsat image mosaics centered on 1975 and 1990, and a 2000-era collection came out a few years ago.

Price may have been the primary obstacle to global Landsat mosaics for many years, but according to John Dwyer, the USGS lead on the Global Land Survey 2005 project, “monumental” technical challenges remained.

Citizens have the right to defend themselves [ 501 ]

Hit back if police officer attacks - Russian interior minister

• Video:

  Russian riot police demonstrate new riot control vehicle

• Video:

  
  

SHCHYOLKOVO (Moscow Region), November 26 (RIA Novosti

Ordinary citizens have the right to defend themselves against police officers who launch illegal attacks on them, Russia's interior minister said Thursday.

Rashid Nurgaliyev was speaking at a meeting with students in the Moscow Region just days after police officers in both the capital and St. Petersburg were detained on suspicion of beating innocent people to death.

"If the citizen is not a criminal who is being detained and has not broken any laws...if he is being attacked, self-defense is applicable here," the minster said in response to a question on rising police crime.

Nurgaliyev, who recently reminded police chiefs that their officers should use their weapons against criminals and not innocent citizens, said rogue police were "criminals in uniform, who need to be isolated and jailed."

Russian lawyers and rights activists warned against following the minister's advice, pointing out that the country's Criminal Code stipulates harsh penalties for attacks on police officers.

Lawyer Anatoly Kucherena said a police officer's word would always be believed, and that "criminals in uniform" could simply say "I was on duty...he committed a crime, I detained him and he resisted."

But the chief spokesman for the Russian Interior Ministry, Police Maj. Gen. Valery Gribakin said citizens "are entitled to resist a police officer if his behavior is improper."

Nurgaliyev also reiterated his intention to fight police corruption regardless of rank and position.

However, a police officer from the southern Russian city of Novorossiisk was fired earlier this month after posting a video on the web asking Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to launch a nationwide corruption probe.

The reputation of the Russian police has taken a beating in recent years, with frequent cases of police brutality. In the last 18 months, police in Russia have been convicted or charged with burning a suspect to death, shooting sprees and rape.